Month: May 2017

Mother Dead from Smallpox, Daughter in Disgrace

Liz Gauffreau 2 Comments

 

The second of John and Sarah Brown’s children to predecease him1 was eldest daughter Sarah, who died of smallpox in 1678:

The next year his oldest daughter, Mrs. Sarah Poor, was one of the victims to the smallpox in Charlestown, at which time 40 persons died. She left seven small children. The eldest, Sarah, was 17, and being left without a mother’s watchful care, she was shortly after in difficulty, being brought before Court for having a child. She was sentenced to be whipped and imprisoned. She afterwards died in jail, Feb. 9th, 1688.2

Although this is more information than I’ve been able to find about many of the early descendants of my tenth great-grandfather John Brown who are nothing more than names and dates, there are just too many unanswered questions before I can lay these two Sarahs to rest. Who was the father of Sarah’s illegitimate child, and why didn’t he marry her? What were the circumstances of her death in prison at age 27? What became of her child?

Given that Cousin Asa wasn’t particularly diligent about citing his sources, I thought that looking for corroboration in birth and death records on Family Search would be a good place to start. I’m finding discrepancies, so I’ll be taking some time to research further. In the meantime, I’ve read some useful information on other genealogy blogs about “bastardy” in Puritan New England, which should help in my search.

I’m not sure how long it will take me to find out more information, so stay tuned, and if you have any suggestions, please send them my way!

1John’s wife Sarah Walker Brown had died in 1672.

2Asa Warren Brown, “From the Exeter News Letter, October 27, 1851: The Hampton Brown Family” (unpublished manuscript, Personal Papers of Ronald Dalrymple Brown, n.d.), 4.

That’s Not the Way It Happened!

Liz Gauffreau Leave a comment

I’ve always been fascinated by the stories families tell about each other, particularly when the stories conflict.

The event that occasioned my weaning from the bottle has always been one of my favorites. My father told me his version throughout my childhood to demonstrate what a spirited little thing I was, and I reveled in the drama of the image that the story evoked.

I didn’t think to ask my mother for her version until I was an adult and had a child of my own.

Weaning Baby Liz from the Bottle

According to my father, I was weaned from the bottle on the day that my mother came into my room to get me up from my nap and I was so happy to see her that I tossed my bottle out of the crib with such gay abandon that it smashed on the floor like a wineglass, spraying milk and broken glass all over the room. And my mother vowed, that as God was her witness, Liz would never drink from a bottle again!

My mother’s version of the story is that I woke up from my nap and unscrewed the top from the bottle, dumped the milk on myself, then waited miserably in my wet nightie in my wet crib for someone to come in and clean up the mess.

Killed in the Indian Wars

Liz Gauffreau 5 Comments

kingphillip

Asa Brown’s history of the family indicates that all five of John and Sarah’s sons were involved in conflicts with the Indians:

If we may put confidence in tradition, all five of his sons were engaged in the conflicts with the Indians, but with respect to three of them, it is certain. During King Philip’s War in 1676, John and Thos. Brown were among those to whom Hampton was to pay certain sums for military services, as may be seen by the record of expenses in that war, still preserved at Boston, and they seem to have been under Major Appleton. In 1677, Stephen, the youngest son, being but 18 years of age, enlisted, and accompanied the expedition to the eastward, and in the unfortunate battle at Black Point, when 60 out of 90 men lost their lives, he was killed on the 29th of June, 1677.

The Court of Middlesex County at Cambridge, on the 28th of September following, granted administration to “John Poor of Charleston on the estate of his brother-in-law, Stephen Brown, lately slain by the Indians at Black Point”, &c.1

“The Battle at Moore’s Brook, Scarborough, Maine, June 29, 1677” by Sumner Hunnewell provides a detailed accounting of the battle in which Stephen Brown was killed. The article, which appeared in the August 2003 issue of The Maine Genealogist, was prompted by ‘“[t]he rediscovery of a 1677 casualty list of men wounded and killed in Maine’s last pitched battle of the King Philip’s War.”2

Stephen is mentioned twice in the article:

Only one man from Swett’s town of Hampton was recorded to have accompanied him. STEPHEN BROWN was a teenager probably living with his widowed father, a first settler and prosperous landowner in Hampton. It may have been a shortlived but merry meeting for Stephen and John Parker of Andover. Stephen’s older sister had married John’s oldest brother. Some (if not all) of Stephen’s brothers were soldiers during the war and now it was his turn to play the man.3

STEVEN [sic] BROWN died and like his commanding officer would no longer return to his beloved Hampton.4

 

You can find a link to “The Battle of Moore’s Brooke” on the Lane Memorial Library’s website: http://www.hampton.lib.nh.us/hampton/history/military/doleful2.pdf.

After finding a 21st-century perspective on King Philip’s War, I was interested to see what a 19th-century historian had to say. I found Pictorial History of King Philip’s War by Horace Wentworth, published in 1851 with the somewhat overwrought subtitle, Comprising a Full and Minute Account of All the Massacres, Battles, Conflagrations, and Other Thrilling Incidents of That Tragic Passage in American History.

Imagine my surprise at the view of King Philip presented in the book’s introduction:5

introkingphillip

I think the last sentence says it all, don’t you?

1Asa Warren Brown, “From the Exeter News Letter, October 27, 1851: The Hampton Brown Family” (unpublished manuscript, Personal Papers of Ronald Dalrymple Brown, n.d.), 1-2.

2 Sumner Hunnewell, “‘The Battle at Moore’s Brook, Scarborough, Maine, June 29, 1677,'” Lane Memorial Library, accessed May 7, 2017, http://www.hampton.lib.nh.us/hampton/history/military/mooresbrook.htm.

3Hunnewell, “‘The Battle,” Lane Memorial Library.

4Hunnewell, “‘The Battle,” Lane Memorial Library.

5Daniel Strock and William Croom, Pictorial History of King Philip’s War: COMPRISING A FULL AND MINUTE ACCOUNT OF ALL THE MASSACRES, BATTLES, CONFLAGRATIONS, AND OTHER THRILLING INCIDENTS OF THAT TRAGIC PASSAGE IN AMERICAN HISTORY. (Boston: Horace Wentworth, 1851).